The Apocalypse

MOVIE DETAILS

Rating: 1.6 out of 10
Director: Justin Jones
Writer: Carlos De Los Rios, David Michael Latt
Star Cast: Rhett Giles, Jill Stapley ,Kristen Quintrall
Genres: Action/Adventure/Drama/Sci-Fi/Thriller
Release Date: September 22, 2011

The Apocalypse

In his decade’s closing film, Francis Ford Coppola did not disappoint and dropped another cinematographic mastery piece. The Timeline states that I watched the film first time in college, over ten years ago. However, this is all from a very long time ago when such a huge cinematic scope was absolutely unheard of. For a time, I even believed that I was rather disadvantaged given that I was homeschooled and went to boarding school where movies with R-ratings were banned altogether.

When I went to college, I realized how many classics there are out there. With the passage of time, there are indeed other films that have lost their charm but Apocalypse Now has always been one of my top films. I kept on trying to make these links throughout the film and they only added to the experience. I should mention that I used the original cut as I am not a huge fan of the Redux cut. I do not see the intricate details in the additional cut, which makes the original film phenomenal.

The Vietnam War consumed the mind of Captain Ben Willard (Martin Sheen) and he could find nothing on his return; hence he volunteered for more tours in that war-torn country. His latest assignment is very secretive; it is to eliminate the now AWOL Colonel Walter Kurtz (Marlon Brando). Willard’s character is developed in the movie as he studies the man of his mission; killing Kurtz that was once a trusted officer but succumbed into becoming a hormone driven cult leader somewhere in the jungles.

Willard is ordered to board a patrol boat manned by Chief Petty Officer Phillips (Albert Hall) down the Nung River and he is highly troubled since he was not informed of the operations he would be participating in. During the course of the journey, there are challenges which included sailing past a mobile air command site commanded by Lt. Col. Kilgore (Robert Duvall), colliding with Playboy Bunnies, and a quick visit to a monstrous base engaged in the hopeless business of attempting to hold a shattered bridge. It is safe to say that the furthest point that affected both Reck and Kurtz is when they met. The Meeting that transformed both of them absolutely.

I like to think that Apocalypse Now was first and foremost a film about horror, and this is a position I have maintained since I first watched it. It goes without saying that every Vietnam War movie comes with some horror in its narrative, but this one has a more potent horror aesthetic. The haunting sense is created by the music, cinematography, acting, lighting and many other different scenarios. Almost at once, we are introduced to the insanity of the world, in this case, Kilgore.

It is the scariest thing and much to our horror, it is all true in the context of Vietnam and its war. Soldiers were dosed with deadly cocktails of different drugs to keep them active, which along with being idle and waiting for an event created a highly charged atmosphere where many innocents were killed. This is evident in the scenes towards the second act when the patrol boat intercepts a civilian boat for ID purposes. It takes very little for tempers to flare and all reason to fly out the window. That moment happens just before the boat leaves Kurtz’s territory.

The whole experience works and symbolizes the war in totality. The deeper the characters immerse themselves into the insanity of the coming war, the weaker their relation with their identity and reality becomes. That can be expressed as actual death, or as the murder of self. It begins with a helicopter gun attack on a Vietnamese village, and by the end of it, the slavery of thought processes only continues to deepen. The western imperialism that Eminem would call as ‘propaganda’ manages to mask what it really seeks, and Coppola actually urges to feel the outrage behind the winters of Monroe.

It is a vision of America, who has just turned the gates of freedom and equality, whose torch the very same America weather sets to flame, as its people do against the people who have desperately been seeking liberty. I do not consider Apocalypse Now as solely an anti-war picture, as some of the ideas expressed by Kurtz, who is supposed to be a more or less sympathetic figure, are appealing in the sense that they suggest a noble rage behind war. In this context, he perceives the rage of the Viet Cong as beautiful because “it is so pure” and then adds that this is totally contradictory to the American soldiers’ insane and senseless fury only adding embarrassment for them.

Willard’s entire mission is nothing,” a person would say after learning what he was involved into and especially with the events in the Vietnam War. The ‘powers’ allow young men to slaughter the Vietnamese nation but how can they allow Kurtz to kill anyone who stands his way? In fact, murder is no crime for the ‘leaders’, only the person to be murdered matters and to them, that would be the injustice. In fact, more than one Willard himself realizes today that “This is a long mission,” for undertakers, and that, in the light of events, it is definitely not the way the armies are expected to fight.

But mind you, the war has already subtended the grip in his mind, and ever insisted, to be audacious and bold. He resembles Kurtz in many ways; both were slowly losing themselves as they went through all the hell of war. Indeed, it may be thought that, in light of the absurdity, for these men there is no longer any such thing as the place they think of, this is the embodiment of what their home should be.

Even inside atmosphere that bears the elements of warfare. They have been and will continue to be in the womb of war wherein the cycle of catastrophe never comes to an end. Things such as surfing, Playboy, rock music, all spoken values of America in them, are like artifacts of a place that these soldiers will never see and transition highlights how empty they are in light of war.

Just like the Godfather series, Apocalypse Now is an interesting movie that has a lot of depth and can be analyzed. The testament to its power is that you could change the war while keeping an American engagement in the equation, and very few of the themes and ideas would have to be changed.

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